ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

Great film

I’m with Alfred aside from the “only Kurosawa I don’t like” part. It’s no secret he’s not at the top of my list of Japanese masters (tho I do quite like his later ones), and in IKIRU’s case I just don’t think I ever get on the same wavelength of its tone. I had higher hopes for this one going in though, so the falloff might have been partially expectation-based

He's still the top of mine so that evens it out!

Love Ikiru, it's all about that long final scene with the dudes at the funeral getting drunk and angry and wondering how to Fix Things.

Yup, it is an amazing thing when the funeral comes on.

Kurosawa is a curious one. I liked to loved pretty the three or four I've seen but I never went onto obsessively track the other half a dozen or so down.

Kurosawa has like 30 films still available. and of those i think only one is out of print and hard to find (The Idiot)

First saw Ikiru as part of a Sociology Of Death college class in the late 80s. Not my favorite Kurosawa, but easily one of my fave watching experiences.

Finished this yesterday, in agreement with most of the above in one way or another, it's kind of tonally all over the place until the last section at the wake, when it finally all clicks this this is less a film about death, and more a film about bureaucracy. Also enjoyed the brief scene in the night club earlier on, I have some Japanese jazz from the era and it's really like nothing else.
His son is a prick.

Holiday is now available in full on YouTube

So is Ugetsu Monogatari

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Ugetsu_monogatari_poster.jpg

Ugetsu Monogatari, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953

Morbsies #462
Sight & Sound Critics #90

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNPfl1dcTkI

Now that most of his great films have become available in the last 20 years, I have less time for Ugetsu, but it's a landmark of creepiness and erotic sorrow.

Not my favourite Mizoguchi but still devastating, timeless

Brilliant

The phrase I see a lot is “first among equals.” I submit that there should be a similar and near-equally laudable “second among equals,” which UGETSU probably is, alongside Mizoguchi’s late run

I don't want to do "better than" arguments, so I'll try very hard not to do that, but what a movie, what magic he crafted throughout his career but the 50s especially, fuiud

I've dug thru the source material cos it fascinates me and I'd confidently argue that - like Hitchcock for example - he made his sources his own and made them better. Ugetsu taps a bunch of veins at once, political personal, but the big point is it sticks with you, it transcends what it might be "about"

It's strange that the most memorable scene from this for me is where the "samurai" brags about his non-existent virtues to his young cronies. The ghost story stuff is a little vague by comparison, though it obviously made a big impression on Tarkovsky.

So this was wild. Don't think I've ever seen anything like it.

Watched with my wife who knows a decent amount about Japanese ghost culture, my idea was that the story followed a dreamlike narrative, but she pointed out that it was a standard, fairly simple morality play if you are familiar with Japanese ghost stories. It was the atmosphere, especially the sound, that made it work for me.

yeah, there are quite a few like it. i think i prefer Kuroneko. i need to rewatch Ghost of Yotsuya (it's on youtube). Kwaidan has similar bits too. Onibaba...

useful list here, including more modern j-horror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnica240Wq4

the kiln aspect was interesting as well - there was a bbc4 japanese traditional arts programme on just before i saw Ugetsu for the first time and the same kilns are still in use (although not universally)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Madamedeposter.jpg

Madame de..., Max Ophuls, 1953
Morbsies #499
Sight & Sound Critics #90

Sometimes the greatest film ever made.

Another cracking film.

I love Earrings... because it's a film whose editing and camera movements convey a passage of time as subtle as any novel. When I read Balzac and Trollope, the marriage between Boyer and Darrieux is how I imagine the day-to-day functionalities of a patrician 19th century marriage. The beauty of Boyer's performance is how he's perfectly willing to go along with it but with the quiet half-grins that Ophuls catches it's clear he also loves Louise enough to have given a more erotic marriage a shot if she wasn't so bent on escaping within her confines. Few films convey how possessions delineate the confines of one's own entrapment.